I've just bought some pottery clay for the purposes of mixing with mineralized topsoil for added iron content and to help the soil settle if disturbed, as advised in Aaron Talbot's guide to mineralized soil tanks.
After some shopping around I decided to buy 5kg of Red Earthenware Powdered Clay from Bath Potter's Supplies. The product is described as a raw, natural, unprocessed clay which sounded ideal for my purposes. It does not have grog added to it like some other clays, only natural pebbles which I expect I can sieve out if necessary. Since it comes in powdered form it will be easier and less messy to mix with my topsoil than a wet clay.
The price was £10.26 for a 5kg bag, plus £9.60 postage for a total of £19.86. I estimate I will need about half a kilo of clay for my 40x60cm tank so 5kg is much more than I really need! I did find another supplier selling 2.5kg of powdered red clay for £12.60 including postage but they did not provide any information about how natural the clay was and did not respond to my queries so I decided to avoid.
Bath Potter's Supplies website was easy to use and the checkout went smoothly. They accepted payment by Paypal or card. I immediately received acknowledgement emails and a dispatch notice came half an hour later.
I ordered the clay at 12 midday on a Thursday and it arrived at 9am the following morning, very well packaged. Now that's fast service!
The clay looks good, a mix of small and medium sized grains so it may need a bit of sifting before I use it.
In summary, I'm very pleased with the service from Bath Potter's Supplies and recommend them to anyone looking for clay for their dirt tank.
I have a total of 20kg of mineralized topsoil prepared and waiting in a bucket, so adding 10% clay means I will use 2kg of the clay max and I'll have at least 3kg of this stuff left over... maybe I'll put some it up for sale on UKAPS!
After some shopping around I decided to buy 5kg of Red Earthenware Powdered Clay from Bath Potter's Supplies. The product is described as a raw, natural, unprocessed clay which sounded ideal for my purposes. It does not have grog added to it like some other clays, only natural pebbles which I expect I can sieve out if necessary. Since it comes in powdered form it will be easier and less messy to mix with my topsoil than a wet clay.
The price was £10.26 for a 5kg bag, plus £9.60 postage for a total of £19.86. I estimate I will need about half a kilo of clay for my 40x60cm tank so 5kg is much more than I really need! I did find another supplier selling 2.5kg of powdered red clay for £12.60 including postage but they did not provide any information about how natural the clay was and did not respond to my queries so I decided to avoid.
Bath Potter's Supplies website was easy to use and the checkout went smoothly. They accepted payment by Paypal or card. I immediately received acknowledgement emails and a dispatch notice came half an hour later.
I ordered the clay at 12 midday on a Thursday and it arrived at 9am the following morning, very well packaged. Now that's fast service!
The clay looks good, a mix of small and medium sized grains so it may need a bit of sifting before I use it.
In summary, I'm very pleased with the service from Bath Potter's Supplies and recommend them to anyone looking for clay for their dirt tank.
I have a total of 20kg of mineralized topsoil prepared and waiting in a bucket, so adding 10% clay means I will use 2kg of the clay max and I'll have at least 3kg of this stuff left over... maybe I'll put some it up for sale on UKAPS!
